RHODE
ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS, CHARTER OF
(July 8, 1663), was granted by King Charles II, in the 14th year of his reign, to Roger Williams. In 1636, Williams left Massachusetts with his followers, for the purpose of religious freedom, and founded Providence Plantation. There they established the First Baptist Church in America in 1639. The colonial patent of 1644 was confirmed by the Royal Charter of 1663, which read:
We submit our persons, lives, and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His given us in His Holy Word.387
That they, pursueing, with peaceable and loyall mindes, sober, serious and religious intentions, of godlie edifieing themselves, and one another, in the holie Christian ffaith and worshipp … together with the gaineing over and conversione of the poore ignorant Indian natives … to sincere professions and obedienc of the same faith and worship. … a most flourishing civill state may stand and best bee maintained, … with a full liberty in religious concemments, and that true piety, rightly grounded upon gospell principles, will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to true loyalty.388